The bigger factor is that Iris Pro simply isn't available as a desktop part -- it's only available in the BGA package i7-4770R, which OEMs can use in things like all-in-one PCs. The other place where we'll see Iris Pro (for now) is on laptops with the HQ series parts, but again that's not going up against desktops. GT3 and GT3e effectively don't exist as desktop offerings right now, but that's not too surprising as laptops stand to benefit most from improved iGPUs.Reply

Let me remind you that the Iris5200 is a $650 part. In fact, the ONLY situation where the Crystalwell part makes sense is when TDP and power requirements/battery concerns are the absolute priority. Otherwise, it's much cheaper to get a non-iris part and a separate mobile gpu (say, radeon 8970M) that offers vastly superior performance. Reply

AMD is worse than nVidia's stuttering, but is easily fixed by adding a third GPU. So instead of using two high end cards in Crossfire/SLI, using three mid-high end cards virtually eliminates stutter.Reply

Indeed, there is a $468 part. You can still fit a decent dGPU and a decent CPU on that budget for, once again, vastly superior performance. And you don't need crossfire but you do lose on power consumption, which is the only point the Iris has for it.Reply

I wonder how much discount do OEM generally gets from Intel. 30% off Tray $440 @ $308/chip ? If the CPU used to cost them $200 and $100 for the GPU, i guess the space saving of 2in1 solution, less power usage, while giving similar performance is going to be attractive enough. Reply

Yah, for me, the only consideration for a system with on-die CPU graphics is if I buy a low-end notebook that I want to do a little gaming on, and the chips with Iris price themselves out of that market. I've recommended AMD for that kind of product to my friends before, and I don't see any reason to change that.Reply

No, Crystalwell also makes sense on any high-performance part. Be it the topmost dekstop K-series or the Xeons. That cache can add ~10% performance in quite a few applications, which equals 300 - 500 MHz more CPU clock. And at 300$ there'd easily be enough margin left for Intel. But no need to push such chips...Reply

As others have already pointed out it's not the "most important information" at all. Crystalwell isn't available on a regular desktop socket.

Most importantly though, that is also for a good reason: Who would buy it? At the price point of the Crystalwell equipped CPUs you would get hugely better gaming performance with an i3/i5/FX and a dedicated GPU. You can build an entire system from scratch for the same amount and game away with decent quality settings, often high - in full HD.

There is a point to make for HTPCs, gaming laptops/laplets, but i would assume that they don't sell a lot of them at the Crystalwell performance target.

Since the article is about Desktops however, and considering all of the above, Crystalwell is pretty irrelevant in this comparison. If you seek the info on Crystalwell performance i guess you will know where to find it.Reply

"Who would buy it?" If it was just the added cost of the eDRAM put on top of the -K SKU (so 50€ or something on top of the i5-4670K and i7-4770K) I'd buy it in a heartbeat. First of all, it offers better QS functionality and second of all, the 128MB L4 cache is not exclusive to the iGPU, but can be used for the CPU as well, which offers some serious performance gains in programs that can make use of it.Reply

MSRP really isn't a valid comparison here as they are entirely different price points/target audiences. The point is to test the iGPU capability.

AMD and Intel have very different approaches to iGPU and processor SKU's, today. AMD and it's Fusion are specifically targeting low price points where AMD believes the value of an iGPU is most attractive. The CPU cores are similar to its FX line, but it's an entirely different die than its flagship desktop parts which have NO iGPU whatsoever.

Intel on the desktop for the mostpart has a single die for all its mainstream Core i7's down to budget Core i3, Pentiums. The Core i7's iGPU isn't really focused on giving a budget gaming experience. And this is where Anand's criticism is aimed. They could make an amazing APU with a very balanced iGPU and CPU on the high end desktop parts but have chosen not to. It would seem the powers that be have decided there is no market for Iris Pro and its high end desktop parts.

MSRP would be a valid comparison in the Mobile Core i7 with Iris Pro vs the Richland Mobile parts.Reply

"Intel on the desktop for the mostpart has a single die for all its mainstream Core i7's down to budget Core i3, Pentiums. "

Not true. Dual core and quad core have had different silicon since they started the i3 / i5 / i7 naming convention. I'm no mobile expert, but I know that on the desktop i3 has never had the same die as i7. Reply

A10-6800K is sitting around $150 on Newegg, while the 4770K is pushing $349 daisies. The comparison is still sensible and useful. Spend less money on Intel CPU and the clocks go down. So in an iGP setting for gaming AMD makes more sense, but if you throw a discrete card in the mix you'll have to rethink what your goals are. After staring at those prices, for a gaming only rig I might rather spend the price difference on a discrete card and call it a day if the monitor resolution is 1080p or less.Reply

1080p monitors can be found even bellow 100$ ,there isn't really a point in reviewing desktop anything bellow 1080p. going lower to find where a game becomes playeble is fine but the review should have 1080p tests even if the products are not good enough.Would be nice if Kaveri would double the SP count but AMD might be going for a smaller die to cut costs given their difficult financial situation. Wouldn't quite match the Xbox in perf but would be close enough and could do a decent job at playing console ports for the next few years.Reply

Why test at a resolution where you're not going to get playable frame rates? If you can only get playable frame rates @ 768p by running medium quality, I'm pretty sure it's going to be unplayable at anything other than low / minimum @ 1080p.Reply

Considering that nothing here is playable at 900p, it is quite possible to extrapolate that 1080p won't be playable either. So I'm pretty fine with them not testing it. If you get a $150 APU to play the latest games at 1080p (a resolution much larger than current consoles support in gaming, might I add), you are deluded.Reply

Are the tests currently set up to show higher res but lower detail settings? I know there is a set benchmark settings that they use to normalize, which is fine for high end CPU/mid to high end GPU testing. If I remember correctly the setting, as they climb in "quality" (low, medium, high) increase both resolution and detail concurrently. With Trinity/Richland and eventually Kaveri, it would be interesting to see if these APU's can handle recent games at higher resolution, but lower detail settings. Essentially can you get any recent games to play at common resolutions, even if you have to crank down settings. Reply

I can't imagine anyone really wanting minimum quality 1080p over Medium quality 1366x768. Where it makes a difference in performance, the cost in image quality is generally too great to be warranted. (e.g. in something like StarCraft II, the difference between Low and Medium is massive! At Low, SC2 basically looks like a high res version of the original StarCraft.) You can get a reasonable estimate of 1080p Medium performance by taking the 1366x768 scores and multiplying by .51 (there are nearly twice as many pixels at 1080p as at 1366x768). That should be the lower limit, so in some games it may only be 30-40% slower rather than 50% slower, but the only games likely to stay above 30FPS at 1080p Medium are older titles, and perhaps Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, and (if you're lucky) Bioshock Infinite. I'd be willing to wager that relative performance at 1080p Medium is within 10% of relative performance at 1366x768 Medium, though, so other than dropping FPS the additional testing wouldn't matter too much.Reply

You're wrong. Most people who take Starcraft 2 seriously are actually playing on the highest resolution they can get, with the low detail setting. Sure, the game looks flashier, but it's easier to play with less detail. All pros do it.

Also, as for myself, I like to have the games running on native resolution of the display. It makes "alt-tabbing" (or equivalent thereof on Linux) much more responsive.Reply

This is my BIGGEST pet peeve with some reviewers who will test 1080p and only show those results when testing these types of chips. All of the frame rates will be unplayable yet they'll try to draw "some conclusion" from the results. Test resolutions where the minimum frame rate is like 20-25 fps by the contenders so I can see how smooth it actually will be when I play.

I didn't purchase an IGP solution to play 10 FPS games at 1080p. I purchased it to play low resolution at OK frame rates.Reply

"Richland maintains a 17 - 50% GPU performance advantage (~30% on average) over Intel's HD 4600 (Haswell GT2)"And yet consumes more then 2x the power according to your own charts.And what about the CPU performance? These are desktop parts not laptop parts, their iGPU performance is meaninglessReply

Did you skip just to the conclusion? The reason as to a lack of CPU benchmarks is on the first page.

How much power would a 4770K with a GT640 use, incidentally? And at the other end of the scale, what about that 4600M which is rated at 35W yet in a couple of tests beat even the 4770K with its HD 4600? You're asking for results that Anand hasn't managed to grab just yet for reasons as stated on the first page.

There's some strange results in here. In the 3DMark: Fire Strike Extreme test, all three APUs have the same result, but in 3DMark06, the 6800K significantly beats everything else. However, regardless of one or two oddities, the 6800K isn't a real progression over the 5800K... but it was never really made out nor expected to be.Reply

Who cares about power on the desktop? What are you running, a server farm? We're not talking about a 200W part here. The Richland is easy enough to cool as it is. Just because intel based its strategy around a mobile part doesn't mean we have to run behind absolute power/performance ratios. Price/performance makes more sense for the average user.

Also, iGPU is very important at that price point. If a $150 CPU saves you a $80 GPU, it's quite attractive. USA readers probably can afford to spend $200 for a dGPU, but struggling european economies and the developing world are a big part of the international market.Reply

Well I think this also shows how close mobile will be. Gt2 at slightly lower speeds than the 4770k (say 1200 mhz 3MB cache for an i5/i3 vs 1300 mhz 8MB cache for 4770k) will be about 10-15% slower. Mobile trinity is going to be approximately equal to haswell mobile gt2 and richland may be slightly ahead but the gap is largely gone. Reply

I have always wondered why would anyone paying $330 for a high-end CPU care for a barely adequate iGPU. It's much more reasonable to expect that people looking at the $150 price point will appreciate an iGPU, especially one that is quite decent. The cheapest GT640 I could find was ~$85 (local price), which is no small change. And don't think that the GT640 will get the same scores if paired with the i3...Reply

The vast majority of these CPUs do not go to gamers... Their performance is more than acceptable for a large number of use cases if an OEM doesn't want to include a dGPU. However for $330 you get CPU performance that AMD cannot touch at ANY price point or performance/watt..Reply

I see your point. But how many of these users need the CPU performance of the 4770? Do you think that the average business user needs a 4770 to do excel and answer emails? Will he even notice the difference? I can't really show you statistics, but I imagine that a big part of demanding users are in fact gamers. Reply

QuickSync is one possible answer. Another is that enthusiasts tend to swap out GPUs more frequently than other demographics so having a basic iGPU can come in handy for diagnostics now and then. And not all enthusiasts are gamers.Reply

Thanks for the squeezing this out in such a short turn around. However I just don't think this is useful or new. I have never met anyone in the market for an i7 xxxxk cpu looking to play AAA game using the iGPU, have you? The iGPU in the i7 is just a bonus because it shares a die with the mobile counterpart, and gives you quick sync if prefer speed over quality in your transcoding.

In today's market, the only reason to invest in the space, noise , heat, and money for a desktop gaming PC is to play games at 1080p or higher. Just get a Xbox if you need 720p. From the benchmarks its clear that neither the i-7 Haswell nor the Richland are playable at 900p let alone 1080p. On the other hand, the same tests at 768p on mobile Richland and Haswell parts makes perfect sense given the typical resolution and thermal of laptops. Given the power usage delta between the AMD and Intel desktop parts, I suspect the race is going to be a lot closer in the laptop race.Reply

APUs scale very well with faster memory almost regardless of timings. I'd like to see Richland benchmarks with DDR3 2400, though I can already make a pretty good guess of what those figures would look like.Reply

I'm a little disappointed that AMD cared to release this as a new model generation at all. There's barely enough argument to avoid throwing the "rebranding" flag. Shoulda just fit the upclocked parts appropriately into the current gen's numbering and adjusted prices accordingly.

The effort is appreciated always, but the marketing is somewhat misleading from the surface.Reply

Exactly. I'm mystified by Richland's existence. Exactly where does it make sense for desktop users?

If you're gaming on a desktop and you're on a budget, it's more expensive than the outgoing A10 5800K and not much faster. Nor does it make any games playable that were unplayable before on the older APU.

If you're gaming on the desktop and budget is not the biggest factor, why even bother looking at AMD parts right now?

If you're planning on a HTPC build the 100W TDP is too high. Get a Haswell or an older (and lesser model number) Trinity APU.

If you plan to build your own all-in-one, again the TDP is too high.

So why would anyone buy Richland on the desktop? It's $20 (15%) more expensive than the A10 5800K but only ~5% faster. Is there +1000 model number simply there to justify the price hike?Reply

It's slightly better silicon released to make AMD look a little better. There's also the much touted software bundle they've been mentioning - AMD seems to be more about the "experience" nowadays.

As an upgrade to my old PII X3 710, it'd be significant... but the GPU wouldn't be better than my 4830. Kaveri, on the other hand, would likely improve on the latter as well as providing more than double my current CPU speed. In 2009, the CPU and GPU cost me approx. £180 (about $250?), but in 2013, I'd be surprised if I had to pay more than two thirds of that for something much better. :)Reply

For **** sake please increase the size of the text on your site, it's too small and I'm getting eye strain reading all the articles on Computex, do you not listen to your readers, the text is too small!!!

I suggest you stop giving useless advice, I'm not going to stop using my tablet. Even with text at 120% the text is too small and the text on other websites is huge @ 120%.The text on every other website I have ever visited on my nexus 7 is fine, so why can't anandtech be the same? There is an issue here that needs to be resolved.Reply

Regardless of your feelings, posting about your issue in this discussion is off topic and pointless as Anand is not going to read and act on your post.

I'd say to write to Anand directly but I've tried that and it seems the emails go ignored anyway. I think you either just have to live with the site as it is or stop visiting the site. But whatever you do, don't introduce more off topic posts please.Reply

by not running the trinity on supported max mem you effected the whole review, Richland ends up in that case being a very minor update....

On top of that not a single word on the improved power.

But then again as you mention with all the things around with Intel and all the nice motherboards linup for hasswell etc why even bother its just AMD. pls continue the efforts like this, a few years from know you regret that you will need to pay double for the same cpu, dominiated predefined designs by marketing geeks etc... way to goReply

Its pointless doing a iGPU review if you don't have frame metering factored in. Tomshardware, Techreport, PCPer all did frame transition ratings and this is where HD4600 took a massive beating, in most titles showed up Intel's iGPU to hit 60+ms frame lags while the APU is very low latencies for many titles at lower resolutions (sub HD) is under 1ms where Intel spikes will result in noticeable lags and stutters despite looking close on FPS which are basically not worth what they were.

BF3 @ 1080 on low settings with DDR3 2400 on my 5800K manages about 30FPS but its almost lag free, tested on HD4000 was completely undesireable to even persist, basically playing a slideshow, since HD4600 doesn't fix this much it still puts AMD top in the iGPU stakes by a healthy margin irrespective of frames per second. Since we are comparing top vs top there is no ambiguity. THG showdown between a i3 and 6800K was interesting, a 6800K can beat a i3 + 6670 in a few titles so that is another testiment to the improvement of APU technology.Reply

It still amazes me that websites bench the i7s vs the amd a10 platforms. Whole a10 systems can be purchased for the price of an i7 CPU. Why dont you test a $200 graphics card in an a10 system vs the i7 integrated graphics - if this is the case and show people what they can get (for their $350 dollars spent on cpu + graphics)???? The closest price processor from intel vs 6800k that i found locally was an i3 3240. Why dont you use these in the comparisons?????? Why use a Gt640 only with an i7 & not on the amd system to show the cpu bias in the benches???Reply

While yes the i7 being the fastest mainline part available and x86 will help distort its numbers a bit nevertheless the issue is not x86, the issue is iGPU performance only. That being said the i7 4770K and A10 6800K are both the top line parts in review so there is no ambiguity as to one being entry level and the other top line, these are both flagships so the test is top product on top product iGPU showdown.

What is disappointing is Anandtech still don't have any workable Frame Scaling tool to asses performance as Frames Per Second means diddly squat where Frame Latency is the true indicator. As before the A10 is always below 10ms and often below 1ms while the i7's HD4600 often hits 60ms+ latencies which is basically a microstut.tut.tut.tut.tut.ter.

I haven't personally tested HD4600 but I have been told it has boosted FPS but in terms of frame transistions which are often a combination of hardware and driver support that HD4600 is not much better so again while HD4600 is close in FPS in some instance, its very far off in latency. In short I would rather have a iGPU average 27FPS but have 0.1ms latencies opposed to 35FPS with 50ms latencies.Reply

The comparison is amd's budget apu line vs intels top desktop line. You should throw a radeon 7850 in the amd system to even up the specs (at least dollars wise) and then run a few graphics benches... please someone do a comparison i7-4770k with its iGPU vs a10-6800k+7850hd in gaming. im pretty sure i could guess the winner here...Reply

While it is interesting to see gaming benches, since I might game on an HTPC, I'm actually thinking more on how perfectly the chips can display a 4K video, *and* I'm interested in whether I can run 2 HD movies (two at once) on 2 displays without any dropped frames or stutters (this actually matters a bit at the moment for me). I know there is one article here for the Intel 4600 graphics re 4K.Reply

Anand, I think this is a waste of time. I don't know anybody who buys desktops anymore, unless they intend to use it as a workstation or as a gaming platform. In the first case, they don't usually care about graphics, and in the second case, they will absolutely have discrete graphics and these graphics benchmarks are utterly irrelevant. I like this website and appreciate the work, but I would rather you spend your time on something more useful for us -- for example, comparing the notebook platform integrated graphics would be reasonable. This article puzzles me. Reply

"comparing the notebook platform integrated graphics would be reasonable.". There are many reviews about IGP for the APUs for specific users or gamers. This article highlights how much AMD has arrived in terms of gpu and cpu balance in their desktop and notebook parts (ie APUs specifically) which will pose a serious challenge to Intel's dominance. To many, Intel based cpu with IGP is clearly not the way to go only Intel cpu plus Nvidia discrete gpu or go the APU route and compromise cpu somewhat gaining close to discretely gpu performance for way less money.Also shows that Intel 4600 IGP has gone a long way to within striking distance of AMD APU gpus but not good enough as the sliding scale of reference MOVES each time Intel approaches. The GT3e potentially can match a NV 650M discrete but at the cost of Intel $$$ to the user. Most manufacturers rather go Nvidia discrete which is cheaper and better as well. So unless Intel goes into heterogeneous core architecture chips for cpus, there is nothing really new in their offering. Reply

I still find this article interesting even if IGP are certainly not the main focus of gamers. I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer but I don't game on IGP. I am currently using a 560 GTX which provides me with decent performances in pretty much any situation. On the other hand, it gives an idea of the progress made by IGP. I certainly would enjoy more performance from the one I am using at work which is a GMA 4500 paired with a E8400. There are markets for good IGP but gaming is not of them. As I see it, IGP are more suited to be paired with low to mid CPUs which would make very decent all around machine.Reply

Looks like you used a 65W GT640, released just over a year ago.You could have used the slightly newer and faster 49W or 50W models or a 65W GTX640 (37% faster than the 65W GT640).Better still a GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2 (25W) with the same performance as a 65W GT640!(I'm sure you don't have every GPU thats ever been released lying around, so just saying whats there).

An i7-4770K, or one of its many siblings, costs ~$350.For most light gaming and GPU apps, the Celeron G1610T (35W) along with a 49W GT640 would outperform the i7-4770K.The combined Wattage is exactly the same - 84W but the relative price is $140!Obviously the 25W GK208 GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2 would save you another $20 and give you a combined TDP of 60W, which is 40% better than the i7-4770K.It’s likely that there will be a few more GT600 Rev.2 models and the GK700 range has to fill out. Existing mid-range GPU’s offer >5times the performance of the i7-4770K.The reasons for buying an i7 still have little or nothing to do with its GPU!Reply

i shudder to think what an a10 kaveri can bring to the table considering it'll be equipped with amd's gcn architecture and additional ipc improvements. low price + 4 cores + (possibly) hybrid xfire with a 7xxx series radeon? a great starting point for a decent gaming rig. not to mention that the minimum baseline for pc gaming will rise from decent to respectable.Reply

Sometimes I really don't understand your comparisons and even less the conclusions.Why compare a Richland to a Haswell when obviously they will get used for totally different purposes? Who will purchase a desktop Haswell without graphic card for gaming? Why use super expensive 2133 memory with a super bad processor?

There are really 3 conclusions to be had:- CPU-Wise Richland sucks aplenty- GPU-Wise there is next to no progress as compared to Trinity, the difference being fully explained by a small frenquency increase.- If you want cheap desktop gaming you will be much better server by a Pentium G2020 + Radeon HD6670 or HD 7750 for the same price as a crappy A6800 or A6700.Reply

You make me laugh. I normally do not post comments on these things based on the fact that I read them just to get a laugh, but I do have to point out how wrong you are. I have a G1620, G2020, i3-3240, A8, A10 and a more and have ran benchmarks with a 6450, 6570, 6670, 7730, 7750 and 7770 for budget build gaming computers for customers.Your build of a G2020 with a 6670 in my test was beaten, hands down by the A10-6800k hxf with 7750 (yes I said it, hybrid crossfire with 7750, it can be done although not popular supported by AMD). G2020 with 6670 will run you about $130, and an A10 with 7750 is about $230. To match the A10 hxf 7750 ($230 value) performance with Intel I did have to use 7750/7770 or higher with the Pentiums and I3+7750 ($210 value) did quite well but still was beaten in quite a few things graphics related.Point being a discrete GPU changes the whole aspect of the concept. I3+7750 are very close to A10+hxf7750 in more ways than just performance, but that’s not the point of this Topic. It was AMD 8670D vs Intel HD 4600. I know lots of people that buy Intel i5 and i7 and live off the iGPU thinking one day they would have the money to get a nice GPU and call it good, %60 of the time this does not happen, new tech comes out that’s better and they just change their minds and try to get a whole new system. The APU on the other hand would have been cheaper and performed better for what they needed, had they just gone that road, and I am not the only one that came to that conclusion. AMD has done a great job with the APU and after testing many myself, I have become a believer. Stock i5 computer for $700 got smashed by stock A10 $400 in CS6 sitting side by side, I could not believe it. I do not have to argue how good the APU is doing because Microsoft and Sony have already done it. So I leave with a question. If the APU was not a fantastic alternative that delivers a higher standard of graphics performance, then why are they going to be used in the Xbox1 and PS4? Reply

This is a slanted review. The i7 with the separate Nvidia card skews the results, perhaps erroneously, toward Intel. How about the A10 with the same separate Nvidia card and/or the comparable separate AMD video card? The performance difference can be quite drastic.

IMHO, one should compare apples to apples as much as possible. Doing so yields a much more complete comparison. I realize that these APUs tout their built-in graphic abilities, but Intel is trying to do so as well. It's the only way to give the CPU part of the APU a fair shake. That or leave the i7-Nvidia results out completely.Reply

With Xeons you are getting into multi-proccessor boards, which brings up a question I have been wondering about.Does AMD have any plans to make their new APU's multiprocessor and crossfire capable? At that price point I wouldn't mind buying two of them to stick on a motherboard...Reply